Empowering Pregnant Women in Lima, Peru

Many Peruvian women report experiencing physical or sexual violence in long-term romantic relationships, and studies have identified pregnancy as a time of particularly high risk for victimization. That violence carries risks for both mother and child during pregnancy and postpartum. 

The Ford Program is adapting an intervention program now being piloted in South Bend, Ind., and Memphis, Tenn., for use in the capital of Lima. The Pregnant Moms’ Empowerment Program addresses how intimate partner violence affects mental health and pregnancy in five group therapy sessions. 

Ford is collaborating with local agencies in Lima to make the program culturally and contextually relevant for women there, and will evaluate its success through a mixed-method study that includes qualitative interviews and a randomized control trial to measure quantitative physical and mental changes in participants’ health.

Partners: Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, Holy Cross Instituto de Pastoral de la Familia (INFAM), Building Resilience Against Violence Exposure (BRAVE) Lab, Universidad Católica Sedes Sapientiae

UPDATE:

Ford Program Researcher Laura Miller-Graff (psychology and peace studies), and co-principal investigator Kathryn Howell of the University of Memphis have been awarded $2.5 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to evaluate an intervention program for pregnant women exposed to violence. It builds on a Ford Program–funded project in Lima, Peru, as well as on pilots in South Bend and Memphis. Women are most likely to experience violence from their intimate partners when they are young – and when they are pregnant. Exposure to violence during that critical time has negative outcomes for both mother and infant, and there is a lack of effective interventions to support them. The researchers are working to change that with their Pregnant Moms’ Empowerment Program. “Violence is an offense against the whole person, the whole family, and our response to it should also be holistic,” said Miller-Graff, a Notre Dame alumna. The NIH grant will allow them to complete a randomized, multisite, controlled trial involving more than 200 women. The Lima arm will continue to receive funding from the Ford Program.